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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23389480">oderint dum metuant</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf'>seraf</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Claustrophobia, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Canon, Prayer, Trans Male Character, only alluded to but Important, trans mike crew</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:42:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>785</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23389480</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>( let them hate, so long as they fear. ) </p><p>mike crew searches for a way out. for any way out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>oderint dum metuant</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>the falling titan cannot reach him here. he knows that, knows that as well as he knows that the name he was born with isn’t his realname, as well as he knows the smell of ozone, as well as he knows the feeling of the rain on his face. he has prayed to his god, and tried to <em>fall, </em>and there is nothing. there is nothing but the suffocating chokehold of the earth, crawling into his throat, his lungs, when he tries to pray, as though mocking him. </p><p>it is the antithesis of everything that he is, the soil packed in enough to crack his flight-hollow bones, the lungs meant for altitudes just leaving him enough space to swallow more dirt. he forgets - he forgets things, here. he forgets what it felt like, to have the wind whip his hair into his face. to laugh. almost forgets, sometimes, that his name is mike crew, feels the buried try to take <em>that </em>from him, too, but he digs his cracked fingernails in hard. </p><p><em>no. that isn’t yours to take. </em>it’s <em>his </em>name, and he chose it, and he remembers that he is mike crew, even as he forgets why he chose it, even as he forgets what those words would sound like, spoken aloud. </p><p>he calls out to viscera, next. it had been the one he’d spent the most time with, other than the falling titan, pulling pieces of himself out and trying to make them line up properly instead of dissolving into fractals. but viscera cannot help him here; he feels his bones crack into new shapes, feels his flesh change form, but it does not <em>free </em>him. sometimes, it can get him a little bit of space, but not for long, and soon enough, the choke of the earth becomes too aware, and swallows him all the tighter for every ounce of flesh he manages to shift even a little. </p><p>and it leaves him, sooner than it had come. mike wasn’t <em>loyal </em>to it, after all - if he tried, he could still reach it, but it owed him nothing, held no interest in him here. </p><p>the eye. he <em>tries, </em>but all there is is fleeting periods of time where he knows he is <em>seen, </em>and wonders why no one does anything about it, if someone knows he is here. remembers soon enough that the eye is nothing but a voyeur. that it likely feeds off of his discomfort, loves the way he knows he would be crying, were he not so dehydrated. </p><p>corruption - he does not <em>want </em>to call corruption. he doesn’t like it, to this day. hates the filth, hates the insects. remembers the way his house collapsed, and the <em>stench </em>of it. it has been so long, since he reached to the filth. when he tries, all he gets for his efforts are a few writhing things scuttling through the bullet holes in his chest. he thinks some of them might have fed, on their way through. if there were anything in his stomach other than soil, he thinks he would vomit. </p><p>there are no more options left to him. </p><p>every day in the buried is like hell. there is no way to tell what a <em>day </em>is, in the buried, because there is no such thing, not anymore. </p><p>there are no more options left to him. </p><p>he doesn’t remember what his name is, anymore. he doesn’t remember what the air felt like, on his skin. </p><p>there are no more options left to him. </p><p>he is buried. buried. he is buried, and the earth has him. </p><p>there is <em>one </em>option left for him.  </p><p>mike crew closes his eyes ( he thinks. it’s hard to tell, with the dirt in them ), and he prays to the twisting deceit. promises himself to it. pictures the fractals in his skin cracking through his mind, twisting him into a being of confusion and lies. begs for it to take him. begs for the electricity to enter his body again, to open whatever awful doors it needed, to turn his mind into a spiralling mess, if it got him <em>out. </em></p><p>he used to think the creature of fractals was the thing that frightened him most in the world. </p><p>but now, he prays for it to return. offers his body to <em>esmentiaras, </em>if only he could see the sky again. begs to a laugh arching out of lichtenberg organs that he used to remember to free him, even if it is only to swallow him into the throat of delusion. it is better than this. it is better than <em>this. </em></p><p>and nothing comes. </p><p>the falling titan cannot reach him here. he begins to wonder if anything really can. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>you'll never guess what character im hyperfixating on !</p></blockquote></div></div>
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